The argument, "The chance that I ended up alive is so incredibly small I cannot imagine it. Therefore I should be glad and grateful to be alive and to be able to die. Better to exist and die than never to exist."

 
“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia.” Richard Dawkins in Unweaving the Rainbow.
 
Many find those lines comforting and feel a drive to appreciate and enjoy life better.

But is the argument logical? What if it is not? It is logical to believe it even if it is not as long as it makes us feel better. Logic does not require us to be cold and unfeeling. It is logical to feel. Feeling it does not imply any repudiation of logic.

It tells us to be happy we are alive and separately to be happy for the experiences that life brings us. The two are not the same thing though they are related.

Some feel that the text should tell us to be glad we exist and are alive and is not telling us to be grateful.
 
But what if you are an atheist and think no God planned your existence? Now you do not need a person to be grateful to in order to be grateful. You are grateful to your watch when it starts working again. In fact gratitude of that kind is very basic. What matters is having gratitude. It does not matter as much if you are grateful to a person or an event or thing. If you are so grateful in life that you feel it towards things that will only smooth the way to and enhance your gratitude to people. There are more things to be grateful to than people in day to day life.

Some feel that gratitude is how you feel when you win some good that you feel you do not deserve. But as you don’t always get the good you deserve it is possible to deserve something and still be grateful for it.

What kind of gratitude matters to us most of the time? It is probably getting blessings we feel we do not deserve.

What kind of gratitude matters most to us in principle? It is probably getting blessings we do not deserve for it is better to just get blessings than to have to work for them.
 
Life is undeserved whether there is a God or not. God cannot give you existence because you deserve it. So we should feel grateful and that gratitude should matter to us more than anything. It unites the believer and the atheist. And the believer should treasure it above even God.

Thus the blessing of life will matter more to us than the blessings that come within life. Having life matters more than what you will get in life.

Death then can be be turned into a blessing if you see yourself as being lucky in being able to live at all. Better to live and die than never live at all. You are grateful for the day at the beach though you know it will end and you end up being glad it has an end for that makes it feel special. And so it is with life.
 
Perhaps having too much control over how long you live and the quality of life you have will be a bad thing for you will take it for granted and you will lose out on the beauty of gratitude.

Whether you believe in God or not, you have to believe that you are here by luck, indescribable luck. Personal identity is more fluid than most people see which means you are literally not the same person you were when you were ten. This does not affect your sense of gratitude. Thus it is more powerful than anything life throws at you. Let it be God to you not God.

A Reason to Die?

You don’t need to die any more than you need to breathe. Dying is not about needing to die. It just happens and does not care what you need or want. It will pave the way for others to live and for others to break their hearts over you. But that just happens and it does not intend it. Nothing intends death.  No one intends it which is the very reason we have to oppose death 100%.  Religion makes people feel an irrational need for a reason to die and seeks to give them one. That could be the reason why religious nations and religious people are prone to start war and fight. To give yourself a reason to die is also to give others a reason to in the sense that it will influence how you see the death of others.

Death may be natural but what has natural to do with making it acceptable?  Not a thing!  Most people argue that it is right to die for it is natural but that is dangerous and unnecessary view.  It is unintelligent though many atheists and most religionists favour it.  You have to find other reasons to help you face the inevitable.